BFI Sets Up National Camp For Elite Women Boxers in Army Sports Institute Pune With Covid Protocols
(Representational image) The elite women’s national boxing camp in Pune will continue till July 31.
The Boxing Federation of India has decided to convene 10 elite Indian women boxers for a camp at the Army Sports Institute in Pune. The group will include MC Mary Kom (51kg) and two other Olympic-bound boxers Simranjit Kaur (60kg) and Lovlina Borgohain (69kg), who will be focusing on preparing themselves for the Tokyo Games. Meanwhile Pooja Rani (75kg), the fourth Indian boxer who has qualified for Tokyo, will continue training at the Inspire Institute of Sports (IIS) in Bellary, Karnataka. The rest of the squad will be training to prime themselves for the upcoming Asian Championships.
With the second wave of Covid-19 raging, the decision to shift to Pune -- within the strict confines of the Army institute -- is to establish a secure environment for the boxers to train without compromising their safety. The camp will continue till July 31.
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The camp will be conducted with a secure training module in which the boxers are divided into three different groups alongside their respective sparring partners and coaches. They will then train within the group at different scheduled times.
“With the Asian Championships and the Olympic Games approaching, our focus will be to utilise the time we have in hand and maximise the training ahead of these two events,” said said Hemanta Kalita, General Secretary of the BFI.
“Considering safety of players, coaches and support staff, we have created a training plan for players in separate clusters to minimise the risk involved. These are tough times but as much as we have to be careful, we also have a job at hand and we are ensuring our boxers can get back to camp and start training and working to get the best results possible,” he added.
Also among the boxers is Jamuna Boro (54kg), the 2019 World Championship bronze medallist, who is making a return to the national camp after a long break due to injury.
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Arundhati Choudhary (69kg) from Rajasthan, who won gold at the recently concluded AIBA Youth World Championship in Poland, has also been selected for the camp alongside Manju Rani (48kg), Sonia Lather (57kg), Lalbuatsaihi (64kg) and Shashi Chopra (64kg) and Jasmine (57kg), who was sensational during her maiden senior international outing at the Boxam Tournament in Spain earlier in March.
The pugilists will be trained by a 10-member team of coaches and support staff which includes Head Coach Md Ali Qamar and Foreign Coach Raffaele Bergamasco.
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